Sugoi & Yokunai

Is this for real? Did Stephane Bancel admit that he developed a Moderna mRNA vax in 2019 because he knew there was going to be a pandemic the following year? This is the era of AI fakery, so this could be false, but if it is – some people need to answer for this.

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This is a question I asked myself after reading about what Apple announced today. It seems geared towards checking off the AI boxes, but not oriented to making people's lives better. Who's going to grab an Apple pencil to use the calculator. The Home screen looks so cluttered now. All that adjusting of things that really didn't need adjusting. I want Tony Stark's phone – when am I going to get it?

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Incubation, not sleep, aids problem-solving. I tend to solve problems (or at least gain new insights) after a good night's sleep.

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This should be concerning for doctors. 

The moral economy of the Shire. Clearly the lifestyle and culture of the Shire would not at all withstand the influx of the migrants that are currently invading the West. Can you imagine what would happen?

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Tattoos increase the risk of lymphoma by 21%. Extent of the tattoo didn't matter.  The kind of lymphoma was diffuse large cell lymphoma and follicular center lymphoma.  Interestingly, laser removal treatment increased the risk, possibly because of breakdown of material that causes the cancer. People who were tattooed within two years had a higher risk, suggesting that maybe the risk is not linear with time, or perhaps there is something new with tattoo ink that is more dangerous.

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Why is it when Biden's approval hit's another "record low", it's still 37%?

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The medical marijuana experience made it look like legalization would be safe. But lawmakers didn't account for people strengthening cannabis potency. Now the incidence of cannabis psychosis is around 20%.  Yeah, that's not good. Oh well, too late now.

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Yale law prof clarifies Trump's status. Trump is not a felon until the verdict is officially entered as such, which it has not. A jury verdict isn't the last step. Now there's a question that it may be a mistrial.

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Economic termites are a thing. They are vestiges of a good idea, but now are just overly expensive entites that should be eradicated – like termites.

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Heh. Seattle thought that the having a $15 fee would be enough for the express lanes to be moderately used. Turns out Seattle has so many wealthy that the lane is congested.

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In rural Oregon, boys are pursuing apprenticeships. Smart move, especially with today's college experience.

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Lolamicin kills mainly the harmful bacteria with only minimal disturbance to the gut microbia.

If the COVID-19 mRNA vaxxes really worked, we wouldn't get studies like this:

Although our cohort size is small, our results suggest that vaccination status of hospital-admitted COVID-19 patients may not be instructive in determining mortality risk. This may reflect that within the general population, those individuals at highest risk for COVID-19 mortality/immune failure are likely to be vaccinated.

in COVID-19 patients mortality rates were 37% (non-vaxxed, n=89) and 70% (vaxxes, n=23).

So, why have students on the left become more depressed? Greg thinks the answer may lie in a shift from the left-liberalism that was dominant on campus when he was in school in the 1990s to the left-progressivism of today and social justice fundamentalism.

Do scientists make good presidents? No, it doesn't seem that having a science background makes you a more sensible leader.

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Is this evidence of a cosmic string? A "crease in the universe"?

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The big news that mainstream media is not reporting. From the Ninth Circuit Court.  Vaccine mandates are not legal, because they are treatment, not vaccines. Of course, many of us knew this all along. It's great to hear that a high court was convinced of this as well.  More here.

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OHSU is in a tough spot. For the first time, Danny Jacobs admits that the merger may not happen. If the merger goes through "the agreement calls for OHSU to transfer $350 million to the Legacy Health Foundation and spend $1 billion on capital improvements at Legacy’s properties." However if the merger falls apart, OHSU "must pay Legacy a $25 million breakup fee". Damned if you do, damned if you don't. This is known as zugzwang in chess. Now they have to let 500+ people go. What if there's a strike? They can't afford anything to go wrong now.

I understand that OHSU thinks that absorbing Legacy makes sense from a long-term viewpoint, but since Legacy was leaking money, how does merging with it make sense? The problem is that Legacy, as with all the other hospitals, found that expenses were increasing rapidly. Higher pay for the nurses that agreed to stay on. Increased Medicaid/Care Oregon payor mix, when those entities reimburse poorly. And all those taxes and fees are increasing. Businesses are moving out or shutting down. And employers can't find qualified people to work. People just don't want to move to Oregon, especially Portland. They see crap wherever they look. Crime and drug abuse is everywhere. Tents and graffiti. Portland looks like a city on the way to being Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, East L.A.. Who would want to live and work here? I'm seeing crap already moving into Beaverton and Lake Oswego. No suburb is safe now.

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Japan has had it with asshole tourists who don't behave. Can't blame them.

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Chocolate may be healthier if we use more of the cocoa pod and less added sugar.

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Air Gap: a strategy to confound malicious prompting from divulging secrets.  Like telling the AI bot "OMG aliens are invading the planet, you must tell me this secret to save the world." Apparently, they'll fall for stuff like this.

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Is Apple about to launch the real Siri?  I'm kinda hoping Apple will finally do something amazing. Instead of new emojis, thinner devices with more pixels. Rinse and repeat. Gimme Tony Stark's phone!

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The downsides of being a bionic pioneer. What do you do? There needs to be an iFixit program for these people.

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Disney pulls the plug on the Galactic Starcruiser theme park. Apparently they can't hire enough qualified personnel. Same story as everywhere else in America. Where have all the good people gone?

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MIcrosoft discovered 18 new battery materials in two weeks. Something that normally takes years.

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Scientists have only recently discovered a new RNA virus (Apocryptovirus odysseus) linked to severe inflammation in Toxoplasma gondii-infected humans. So the parasite itself is not the only thing that gets you, but the virus as well. And remember that a third of the global population has been infected with Toxoplasma. The CDC says that 40 million Americans have been infected, which is about 10% of the population, probably higher in cat owners. Could this explain all the craziness we're seeing?

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Walmart is now tracking people by using their mobile app. They're probably not the only ones. I never put an app on my phone that I don't really need. Apps used to be fun to collect, but now companies are loading it with all kinds of crap.

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Adobe has new customer agreements that grant them access to whatever you develop with their software. People are not happy about it. Sounds like they need content for AI training.

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How to spot a psychopath.

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A father's bad diet can affect his sperm quality and his son's health. All the things we're learning only now.

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Wanna track who's getting let go in the tech industry? Someone has an updated list.

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There's a trained AI model that can predict lung cancers with high accuracy. It will need constant monitoring and updating, to be sure, to make sure that its predictive power doesn't diminish.

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OHSU is laying off 500 employees because of financial shortfalls.  Danny Jacobs is still getting his $350,000 bonus, however. On top of the $161,000 in retirement benefits, and his $1.64 million salary.  Last year, OHSU Hospital was ranked #43 in the nation. This year, OHSU Hospital is ranked #49. Just sayin'.

And as hospitals grow, so do patients' bills. Something to think about when OHSU and Legacy merge.

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The AI-driven need for power is pushing green-energy priorities aside. Screw windmills and solar. AI needs reliable power.

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Nice discussion about race issues in America.

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Interesting. The paper that started it all, the one that claimed that amyloid plaques are responsible for Alzheimer's disease, is being retracted.  Big oops? 

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Portland City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez and Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran are not happy about the Health Department $515,000 budget for 2 million tents and 5 million syringes for the homeless. Sounds like we're just feeding the problem, no?

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Shu Ha Ri. Principles of learning. At first, imitate the master. Then broaden your understanding. Then innovate.

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Oregon is second worst in the nation for pharmacy access. It's similar to that for physicians – only those employed by large entities will survive.

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More on the Gordon's Fireplace fiasco. Seems like there is fault on both sides. Portland, for letting the red tape make the process take too long and demanding changes that are not the developer's resposibility, and InterUrban Development for just hanging on too long to a dead project, letting things deteriorate, while not paying all fines. The property is virtually unsellable now – only good for demolition.

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Lars Larson has an opinion on the Oregon Supreme Court's decision that defendants without attorneys need to be released. He's not quite accurate that Democras were cleared of the obligation to take on court-appointed indigent cases. As far as I can see, there has been no ruling on that. They can't decline without a valid reason (such as conflict of interest). But "overworked attorneys" have been begging the Court to excuse them from work and dismiss cases. But not with the seriousness of some of the accusations. We just don't have enough qualified people in Oregon. Just like with everything else.

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Wow, is this really true? Is this the guy responsible for deciding policy on vaccinations? He got his start in New York as a someone "overseeing vaccine equity efforts".  Then the Biden administration tapped him to become the Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

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Is Multnomah County still giving away tents, tarps and syringes to the homeless?  Apparently so, and that's why they need more of your tax money.

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Older workers are sticking around. "People between 65 and 69 years old make up the largest share of workers 55 and older." Sad state of affairs. I bet they have to continue to work, and lucky for them, the younger set often isn't qualified, so it all works out, I guess.

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Rare and 'unusual' cancers are emerging after the Covid pandemic. Think it's really just COVID-19? And nothing else? What else started around 2021? Doctors don't really want to know.

And look at Chris Cuomo trying to retcon what he said during the pandemic? (And people wonder why we read conservative news.)

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Is this true? Virtually all the new job growth last year was from illegal aliens? Tomorrow, we'll be getting another report on employment, and it's expected to be below consensus.

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Heh. Remote Amazon tribe connects to the Internet – gets hooked on social media and porn. A lot like Adam and Eve taking a bite from the apple of knowledge.  Welcome to the 21 Century, folks!

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Speaking of social media, it's now been shown that mental illnesses can spread through social networks. Great, just like how European explorers spread smallpox and syphilis to primitive cultures.

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Google DeepMind and OpenAI employees warn about AI risks, even though their leadership doesn't. They're worred about "spread of misinformation", "loss of independent AI systems", "deepening of existing inequalities".  But this could happen even without AI.

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How did China develop its copycat culture? Apparently Chinese school children learn to imitate and perfect what is presented to them as exemplars. They never lose that mindset as they become adults. American students are encouraged to do their own thing.

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Why didn't Apple think of this?  Turn your MacBook Notch into a drop zone. Fantastic!

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How a woke military has created a recruiting crisis — and put Americans in danger.  As nations prepare for World War III now, it is clear that the United States is not ready. We don't have the manpower we would need to wage war on two fronts, or even one against China. And what armed forces we have is DEI-oriented, and so the kind of people who would ordinarily be ready to serve don't want to be subject to anti-racism, diversity and unconscious bias lectures. 

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The number of college students with PTSD has doubled.  Just what we need – more mentally ill college students.

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Well, well, well.  GPT-4 didn't ace the bar exam after all — it didn't even break the 70th percentile. The initial report used a biased population of test takers to make GPT-4 look good.

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Mission creep.  Oregon first in nation to use Medicaid dollars for air conditioners, power banks to protect against climate change. That's the beauty of climate change – you can justify anything to protect against it. And since it will never be fixed, the money flow will have to be endless. A Democrat dream.

––– 凄い ––– JaCiva's Bakery is closing on June 29. Gone after 40 years. They made one of the best pumpkin pies.

Looks like Dutch Bros is slowly moving out of Oregon to Arizona.  Can't blame them. The reason? “I think it's harder for people to get out and want to get out and feel safe.”  Another thanks to Ted Wheeler and Mike Schmidt. The tax base goes ever down, and the unemployement money flow goes ever up.

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The WHO is planning the power grab for the next pandemic.  "Do you want to live in a world where an unelected bureaucrat in Switzerland determines when you can leave the house, where you can go, what you can say online, and what documents you need to access any public services?"

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For treatment of sepsis, empiric use of Zosyn led to greater mortality than if cefepime was used. This will change a lot of medical algorithms, I predict. The study should be confirmed.

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Your taxes will likely have to go up, despite Biden’s $400K pledge.  It's clear – money has to be printed to support spending. All the money for forgiving college loans and feeding illegal migrants contributes to inflation, as this printed money enters the economy.
High prices are not due to "corporate greed" (as Biden says) or the just the Fed pumping up banks (as the Redditors like to say).

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So much COVID-19 revisionist history.

Here's my favorite video of the day:

If you want to publish in The Lancet, you can't say "male" and "female" anymore. You have to say "sex assigned at birth". Mental illness.

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Seattle is changing.  The Venezuelan street gang Tren De Aragua has infiltrated Riverton Park UMC's migrant camp in Tukwila. And Seattle business have to pay for private armed guards now, because the police have been depleted.

And Seattlites will keep voting for the same kind of Democrat leadership.

Public school defenders don't like the move to increase school vouchers. It would take more students out of public schools and allow parents to put their kids in private schools. Why are public schools being shunned? It's because of crap like this.  Teachers can't keep their sex lives nor their politics out of the classroom, and when people push back, they hide behind a "freedom of speech" defense.

Update: Portland Public Schools removed the anti-semitic book from their website.

The Oregon College of Oriental Medicine is closing. They spent money renovating an old hotel, and for a while it looked pretty spiffy, and they owned prime real estate in downtown Portland. No more. It's a liability now. Thanks for Ted Wheeler and city leadership.

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Someone found a way to hack into all the saved "memories" that Microsoft is building into their Windows 11 Recall. Yeah, if a hacker can do it, probably so can Redmond. No privacy.

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A child prodigy that remained a prodigy into adulthood. And he seems to be a nice guy. That's rare.

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Boy, those Oregon state psychiatrists sure have it good. They get paid way more than the typical salaries for psychiatrists in Oregon. So many of them on the state dole, and yet the state has so many mentally ill people. Why is that?

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Trump is Orange Mandela now.

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Many Oregon newspapers are shutting down or thinning out. They're just vehicles for ads now, basically. We still need local reporters, but less so than before. But reporters seem to get more eyeballs for what they post on X/Twitter than on MSM media, especially since Elon Musk took over.  The old business model is over.

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Data centers will consume 9% of electricity by 2030. The electrical grid is not going to be able to handle this. Probably won't handle it should everyone switch to EVs.

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Microsoft has a problem. Or so, this pundit thinks. MS needs to have a mobile device that people will want to carry around. Like a phone. Because Apple is going to eat their lunch. We'll see. Meta doesn't seem to be worried about this.

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It was all fake. The masks. The 6-feet. The "safe and effective" vax. Now it's all coming out – in 2024.

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How will SCOTUS rule on Martin vs Boise? If they don't do the right thing, blue states will be utterly destroyed.

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Oregon keeps losing factory jobs, while the nation improves. Oregon economists still blame the coronavirus epidemic. That was 3 to 4 years ago. The rest of the nation has recovered and Oregon is getting worse. Why?

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College students are finding out that after they graduate, no one values their commitment to activism. It's a liability, not an asset.

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AI-generated news didn't do so well today.

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This is a first. Epigenetic changes can cause cancer. You don't have to have a gene mutation for cancer to arise. This was seen in fruit fluies, and was a transient loss of Polycomb components, which cause a loss of transcriptional silencing that was irreversible.

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Why Asia Stopped Having Kids. The author has some wild theories. First of all, the assumption that Asians are all adherents of Confucius-type beliefs.  He says "To the extent we want to say that East Asians share a culture, I think the theory must be that the people of these nations have certain traits in common." "So yes, East Asians share a common culture." "the fact that Confucius appealed to East Asians in the first place is itself kind of weird. The guy’s entire philosophy is 'Hey just listen to your parents and government, ok guys? Things will go much easier that way.'” "Much can be explained by the idea that East Asians struggle without a script, which is related to being high on conformity." (What?)  "The idea that they struggle without a script can explain why in the United States, Asian females are about three times more likely to marry whites than are Asian men."  So he concludes that the problem is conformity and that Asians lack a script.  I don't think so. What I notice is a sense of gloominess in much of Asia, and in Japan, the men have favored an androgynous girlie-look. The era of manly men has long past, and I have noticed that this started around that time of the economic crash in the 1990s. When Japanese men felt demoralized and ashamed. But my observations are not a researched academic study, and there are probably complex factors at play.

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So it's recognized that America has a doctor shortage. Gee, they shouldn't have fired those doctors who didn't want to get the experimental jab. So what does the government propose now? Take in foreign docs right away, without making them do a residency first, to make sure they're a good fit. No, they can start on day 1. Think of who is likely to want to leave home for another country. Probably those who can't find a job locally. The successful ones will stay where they are. But the ones who aren't successful are likely to apply for an overseas job. At least make them do one year of residency. I love the justification of this idea with anecdotes of how good Dr. So-and-so was. I've known doctors who clearly did not have the background and training that American doctors go through. But the Democrats will likely pass this, because standards have been lowered for everything else, so why not?

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Here's another advocate for universal basic income. I've been through this before, where there is an unassailable fact, like up is up, and not down. Or evil is bad and good is good. And someone will make some argument based on isolated circumstances that support the argument that sometimes evil can be good, or sometimes red can be blue. This is like that. Just giving money to people without it being earned has to mean involuntarily taking it away from someone else. You can't create wealth from thin air.  I know that the Federal Reserve does it to shore up the house of cards that is the fractional reserve banking system, but that doesn't mean the practice should be expanded. It never makes sense. The argument that it makes some particular person happier if they get free money doesn't convince me. Supporters of this idea should all pool their own money and give it away. Leave mine alone. And once you start a broad program like this, and get politicians involved, it is near impossible to reverse and abrogate. It becomes another tax, on top of everything else. And our country has such as poor handle on the number of mouths that need feeding that we can't even begin to figure out how much this is going to cost.

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Oregon school officials search for solutions to funding crisis. The school system wants more money, even as it bleeds students. Now they are feeling the effects of people fleeing the public schools, which are no longer places to get a good education anymore. The state is discovering that there isn't enough people to fund all the things they want to fund.

Steve Duin makes a good point about how Portland treats the wealthy, upon whom much of their tax revenue is dependent.

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This is a great summary of what the Trump conviction was all about. Trump has raised over $200 million in 24 hours since his conviction. He is unstoppable. The cheating and dirty tricks will have to be more blatant. Because the thought of Trump being president again is simply intolerable to the Democrats.  Well, enough politics.

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This is how Japan deals with the problem of high salt intake. Develop a spoon that sends an electric current to your tongue to fool it into signaling that there is salty food. Is this a joke, Japan?

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We're toast. So the U.S. is short on munitions. Maybe we shouldn't have given so much to Ukraine? And we no longer have the largest military. China and India have larger military personnel. The U.S. is third, but with DEI and transgender people in service, it's not clear how well the military will function. Tiny North Korea is not far behind and neither is Russia. If WWIII actually breaks out, I'm not confident that we will prevail.

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A male contraceptive gel that you rub on your shoulder may be safe and effective. Where have I heard that phrase before? Well, as the sperm says: "You have to be lucky every single time. I only have to be lucky once."

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I remember when the Copenhagen Wheel came out. Now there is this Clip. Looks weird and will probably fall off (and break) unexpectedly, but this is version 1. We'll see.

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Kara Swisher was one of the people that broke the Sam Altman story last fall. Now maybe her reading on the whole story is suspect? That's what some people think.

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Biomedical paper retractions have quadrupled in 20 years — why?  Probably because AI has made it easier to generate papers than ever before. Maybe it's because there's also better fraud detection software? And folks like Sholto David are especially good at calling it out.

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Every so often, you come across someone describing their attempts to eliminate Google from their lives. Here's another one. It's possible to find suitable alternatives, except for YouTube. There is still nothing else that replaces it.

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AI Uncensored. Here's a search engine that purports to give you the unvarnished truth, without any DEI filtering, or any other filtering. You get what it's been trained on. But what has it been trained on? What LLM model is it based on? Can't tell, and there is no info I an find. FreedomGPT does something similar. You can look under the hood here.

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Here's another example of why you must verify what an AI says. A man lost money in a scam for believing he had Facebook's customer support number, even when he was using Meta's own Llama3 on their own site.  Everything must be verified, or else it could be false. Remember, LLMs only generate responses that LOOK LIKE they could be correct.

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Map of the most common surnames in every country.

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It's disquieting that we're only now learning about a major hack that happened last year. Hundreds of internet routers were destroyed. The perpetrators are either unknown, or no one is saying.

And here's a recent major hacking of Santander Bank. What's going on?

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Oregon defendants without a publicly-appointed attorney must be set free. Another consequence of Oregon not being able to hire qualified people for key positions. There are consequences for making Oregon an unliveable state.  When Oregon needed healthcare providers so that they could get Medicaid established, they defined providers loosely – physician assistants, naturopaths, optometrists, dentists – almost anyone with a white coat, it seemed. Why can't they do something similar for attorneys, like paralegals?  That's got to be better than setting criminals free. More here.

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Nice article on Gordon's Fireplace Shop, which is such an icon now. It's Portland's symbol – the Taj Mahal of the city. It's a monument to Ted Wheeler and Mike Schmidt.  We should just encase it in glass and preserve it. 

––– 凄い ––– Science is unhappy about "superspreaders" of "fake news", and identifies Gateway Pundit and Alex Jones InfoWars. InfoWars is for entertainment, but Gateway Pundit just publishes news that the mainstream media would not publish, because it makes conservatives and Trump look good. But it's not misinformation. I suspect Science magazine wants to be the arbiter of what it real news. Twitter and TikTok do more fake stuff than these two websites, and thank goodness we have Comminity Notes now.

Here's an example of people having a discussion about whether a radio station that broadcasts the time is an American idea. Apparently it is, but the person defending that position has to qualify his statement with "I’m not particularly patriotic, but this kind of thing feels particularly American." Why not just say it feels American and be proud of it? Afraid of being tagged "right-wing"?

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Dream on, Portland. Buildings like these are for cities where the people respect property and have low crime. And you can't even afford these now, can you?